Sir Bradley Wiggins: I would have refused knighthood... if it wasn't for my GRAN

OLYMPIC champion Sir Bradley Wiggins was going to refuse his knighthood – until his grandmother had words.

The World Championship gold medalist was told to accept his knighthood by his nan

The cyclist revealed how his “Nan” said his grandfather would “turn in his grave” if he didn’t accept it.

He was honoured by the Queen after becoming the first British winner of the Tour de France and winning gold at the London Olympics in 2012.

He told Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs: “I never saw myself as a Sir or anything. I said to my Nan that I wasn’t going to accept it. My grandad had died in 2010 and she said, ‘You’re stupid, you’re ****** crazy, you’ve got to accept that’.

“I saw it from my Nan’s point of view. She remembered when I was a baby in that fl at. Where we grew up there weren’t many knights of the realm.”

I never saw myself as a Sir or anything. I said to my Nan that I wasn’t going to accept it. My grandad had died in 2010 and she said, ‘You’re stupid, you’re ****** crazy, you’ve got to accept that

Sir Bradley Wiggins

The 35-year-old also discussed it with his friend, the singer Paul Weller, who reassured him: “It’s different for sport.”

Wiggins’s grandparents helped to bring him up in Kilburn, North London, after his father Gary walked out on his mother Linda when he was a baby.

A six-day racer nicknamed The Doc, Gary Wiggins used to supply cyclists in Europe with amphetamines in the early 1980s.

He once smuggled “speed” inside one of his son’s nappies. In the late Eighties he returned to his native Australia, where he struggled with alcohol addiction. He was found murdered in 2008.

Wiggins said his father’s violent outbursts made him vehemently anti-drugs in a sport tainted by substance abuse, as characterised by seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong’s spectacular fall from grace.

Wiggins, who has two children with his wife of 12 years, Catherine, said: “What’s funny actually about the Lance Armstrong thing is that my Mum’s got some great stories about the people who used to come through our apartment door when I was a baby to buy stuff off my Dad who are now banging the drum saying, ‘Oh I never did anything’.”

Describing his sense of abandonment as something that’s “never left me and will continue to stay with me for the rest of my life”, Wiggins said he would not have been so successful had his father stayed.

“He’d have been so critical of me I’d have just packed it in.”

Instead his mother allowed him to pursue his childhood dream, chalking up £50,000 of debt before he got a lottery grant and even sanctioning her son skipping lessons to go out on his bike.

“If my son said that to me I’d probably say, ‘Well actually mate, you need to knuckle down at school’.” The cyclist, famed for his Modstyle, told presenter Kirsty Young that he was inspired by Chris Boardman winning gold at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.

He went on to be crowned junior world champion in 1998 aged 18 and won gold, silver and bronze at Athens in 2004 before his 2012 glory. “I was quite an odd child really,” he said.

“I used to leave where I lived in my Lycra and be called all sorts. I was just like, ‘Sod you, I want to be Olympic champion’.”

He snubbed music by his close friend Weller, the so-called Modfather, in favour of tracks by the Stone Roses, Oasis and David Bowie. His luxury item was a photograph album of his family.